Miljenko Jergovic - The Walnut Mansion

“You’ve got a nice watch. How old is it?” he asked Luka after two hours of sizing him up, and Luka decided he wanted to leave and looked at his watch to find a pretext for being in a hurry.

“About a hundred years old. Maybe even more,” he answered.

“Is it worth a lot?” the peasant asked, his interest growing.

“I don’t know. It’s valuable to me because it was my grandfather’s,” Luka said.

“Did you love your grandfather?” the old man asked, continuing to pester him.

Luka wasn’t sure what he wanted. He started fidgeting and getting nervous. “I loved him. Why would I keep the watch if I didn’t? I’d have sold it by now.”

The peasant lit up, jumped from his chair, and extended his hand. Luka took it, still sitting, very confused in his soul.

“We’ve got a deal,” shouted the peasant, “I’ll give you cheese, and you give me the watch as security that you won’t cheat me! I’ll give it back to you when you bring me the money from the cheese.”

Luka took out the watch without a word and held it out to the peasant. He didn’t do it because he was dead set on getting this job. He liked the story; he would certainly tell it to someone later in life. Besides, it would have been stupid to disappoint the old man, who was so happy about his perfect idea.

The job selling cheese was, to tell the truth, the first job that Luka had had in his life. But instead of being a miserable burden to him, it turned out that his daily trip to the market wasn’t any different than going to a café, except that the people who came to the market were more interesting.

The sellers came to the market at five in the morning, to occupy the counters and sell their goods as soon as possible, but Luka came at nine, unfolded a camping table, stacked as many cheeses as would fit on it, and then began his show. Either he would shout out the names of all the cheeses he’d ever heard of, or he would tell jokes and funny stories in Croatian about famous generals and dictators, and the old Italian ladies would stop and look at him as at the ninth wonder of the world.

“And Napoleon, my good people, Napoleon couldn’t eat or drink very much. He had a bad stomach or had a nervous disorder or God hadn’t given him enough enzymes and acid to digest food without problems. The real truth of history hasn’t been written down, but as there are no living witnesses, it’s simplest to say that Napoleon never ate lunch or dinner like ordinary people. Instead of eating, he conquered the world. Instead of drinking, he waged war. So was Napoleon, my good people, a great man? Well, missus, you tell me: Would you rather have your husband grab a rifle and shoot up the street, kill all the neighbors, and go on a war of conquest instead of lunching on those delicious mackerels you bought?”

The lady smiled, raised her eyebrows, and shrugged her shoulders. Maybe because she didn’t understand him, though the majority of people in Trieste knew Slovene or Croatian, or maybe because one wasn’t supposed to answer such questions so as not to take time away from the continuation of the story.

“Of course you wouldn’t! You’ll fry him up some mackerels, whip up a marinade for him, feed him and give him something to drink, and then you’ll both lie down for a little while after lunch, listen to the gulls wrangle over fish heads, smell the pines, and think about how nice life is. But it wasn’t nice for Napoleon! Napoleon was unhappy. He couldn’t eat or drink, and everything life had given him could be measured in millions of decares of other people’s land and the millions of lives of his soldiers. Napoleon wasn’t a great man!” he yelled as he finished with his index finger raised high. He held it in the air for a few moments, and then in a softer and calmer tone he would say, “My good people, this cheese is excellent; I eat it every evening, and I’m still not tired of it; please buy some!”

The people who had gathered around would buy Luka’s cheese as if bewitched, and by around ten everything was sold out. Soon it started happening that some of the people wouldn’t be able to get their cheese, and so he would have to apologize to the women and cheer them up with new stories. He already spoke Italian like a native, but he would always tell his culinary jokes and stories about generals and dictators in Croatian. It seemed more suited to him: not every language is suited to every foolishness.

After he finished work at the market, he went to the old man and gave him the money. He would pull out the watch from a wooden box and put it in front of Luka, go off to get more baskets full of cheeses, and when Luka took them, the old man would take the watch back, lock it up in the box, and always repeat the same thing: “You give me liras, I give you the watch!”

They’d already been working together like this for a year, the herd of goats had doubled in size, and the old man had found five more workers for the farm so he could produce as much cheese as Luka needed, but he would always put the watch back in the box. There was nothing bad about this, or Luka couldn’t see anything bad about it. It was funny and in some way special, as children’s stories are special in which crazy kings, hermits, and elves do things that no one in the world can understand but which in the end save the world.

“Do you really still not trust me?” he asked the old man after he’d rented a van because the demand for his cheese had become too great for Luka to carry it in baskets.

The old man blushed, lowered his gaze, and started scratching a splinter off the table, like a pupil that didn’t know an answer.

“It doesn’t matter, it really doesn’t matter!” Luka said, sorry that he’d made the old man feel awkward.

“I trust you. And I did after the first time when you didn’t cheat me. I wanted to give you the watch back, but then I thought that something would take a bad turn if I gave it back. I didn’t think you would cheat me but that something else would happen: there would be an epidemic, the whole herd would die, lightning would strike, my heart would give out. And that’s how it was every time. I’d give you the watch back; I feel awful about taking it; I could die of shame, but the more I feel ashamed, the more I fear that something bad might happen.”

And so the watch stayed with the old man. Luka didn’t take it back even after the man opened his first shop in Trieste and started selling cheeses from all over Italy and France, not even after he opened shops like it in Bologna and Milan. Among the most famed cheeses of Europe, a place of honor was always reserved for the goat cheese from Kras, “The Cheese with a Story.” Everyone who bought it received a booklet of Luka’s tales, which had been compiled by a local journalist. The booklet told about the evils inflicted on the world by people who didn’t enjoy food.

Luka Sikirić acquired a great amount of money and again lived the life of someone who didn’t have to do anything, but at least once a week he went to Kras. The old man placed the watch on the table, Luka got out the money, the maid brought two baskets with cheese, and everything was supposed to be like that first time. But there was nevertheless a feeling that this was a game that lengthens your life and reminds you of good times. People become aware of the beauty of such times only after they pass.

“All of this is killing me,” he complained to the old man, who said nothing and felt as he had when the middlemen had swindled him, taking his cheese and vanishing, except that he no longer had anyone to be angry at, nor could anyone understand where the deceit was and what it was that tormented these two men, who, doing only what they’d wanted in life, had reached the end. The end didn’t make them happy.